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New Insights on Self-Employment of Older Adults in the United States

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  • Joelle Abramowitz

Abstract

Many people engage in self-employment, yet there exists a dearth of data on these arrangements. This paper addresses this gap by creating a novel dataset of self-employment roles to examine heterogeneity in self-employment arrangements. The approach uses non-public 2016 Health and Retirement Study (HRS) data on employer names and locations and narrative descriptions of industry and occupation for older workers reporting self-employment to classify self-employment of older adults in the United States into entrepreneurial roles (own/run; manage; independent). Using this classification system along with the breadth of information collected in the HRS, this work finds substantial differences in demographic characteristics, work characteristics, income, and benefits, as well as substantial variation in quality of life and retirement expectations. The paper also links the classification to administrative records on self-employment and wage employment to identify discrepancies by role across data sources.

Suggested Citation

  • Joelle Abramowitz, 2020. "New Insights on Self-Employment of Older Adults in the United States," Working Papers, Center for Retirement Research at Boston College 202012, Center for Retirement Research.
    • Handle: RePEc:crr:crrwps:wp2020-12
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    File URL: https://crr.bc.edu/working-papers/new-insights-on-self-employment-of-older-adults-in-the-united-states/
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    Cited by:

    1. Joelle Abramowitz, 2021. "What We Talk about When We Talk about Self-employment: Examining Self-employment and the Transition to Retirement among Older Adults in the United States," Working Papers wp423, University of Michigan, Michigan Retirement Research Center.
    2. Cheryl Carleton & Mary T. Kelly, 2022. "Happy at Work - Possible at Any Age?," Villanova School of Business Department of Economics and Statistics Working Paper Series 51, Villanova School of Business Department of Economics and Statistics.

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